Currently sitting at home and resting after saving Cyrodiil from the Oblivion crisis. Getting ready to hit a merchant to sell off some goods. Then it's off to do a little adventuring for a couple of week while his new set of armor is being made.

Today Cheza is being hunted by the guards with no way to pay her bounty and I have writer's block!

Niamh breezed through Summitmist like the adorable whirlwind of invisible destruction that she is.
No one saw or heard a thing.
Ever again.

Well said, and well met!

I′m sorry, I didn′t have time to read it and then I forgot about it

But now I have read it and I can say you are still good at it Poor thing, running into that abomination! I hope she′ll be alright and that someone can draw a new wanted poster for her

Well I have the sad duty to report that V has finally suffered permanent damage as a result of her continued dabblings with all things alchemical - (see what I did there) - following a particularly badly carried out experiment she was caught in the blast as the mixture exploded.
She received fairly sever alchemcal burns to her face and eyes which necessitated a period of heavily bandaged recuperation and the application of various none-too-pleasant herb mixtures. Niamh was a rock throughout however and soon enough V was back on her feet. The scars on her face have healed, although unfortunately her eyes will never be the same again, and so she has gone

http://i798.photobucket.com/albums/yy265/bassmunkee/Oblivion/new_niamh/From_This.jpg

http://i798.photobucket.com/albums/yy265/bassmunkee/Oblivion/new_niamh/to_this.jpg - (Niamh bought her the amulet to help her feel a bit better about the whole thing).

Whilst it does not appear to have affected her vision per se, mummy's mismatched-eyed little girl is very much long gone...

Oh poor Vilja! Her beautiful eyes! I hope she hasn′t succumed to depression because of her incident!

I dont see the difference lol

In the first pic she has one green and one blue eye. Look closely

Are you blind?! In the first picture she has one green and one blue eye, in the second she has two white eyes

My sympathies to Vilja. At least she can still see.

Maybe I am blind

LOL.
It's quite possible you're at least Colour Blind!

Well she wasn't very happy to say the least, but it could have been worse...

At least she can still see and has a good friend to talk to about it

Etta fought her way to the end of the Burrow. She was near death when she finished off the last of the three Felldew addicts and claimed the prize. Then she left the dungeon, and immediately found herself in another fight to the death with several Knights of Order. Somehow she prevailed.

Filled with a profound sadness, mourning for all she had seen and felt, she trudged back to the city. Something about her struggle with Felldew addiction had opened her eyes. She saw the madness that drove the three addicts she had recently killed, the madness that drove Thadon and Syl, the madness that drove Sheogorath, and the madness that drove evil whenever it arose. She saw her own part in the evil, and saw that it was connected to that same madness that had driven those who had used her and abused her from the time she was a child. She was no different from them, really. No better. All were being driven by an unexamined madness, not seeing themselves, not seeing each other, and not stopping to ask why.

When she presented the Chalice to Thadon, he was completely ungrateful. She was not surprised.

When she presented the Fork to Big Head, he fairly gushed with gratitude, enveloped Etta in a great scaly hug, and proclaimed her his dearest friend. She was not surprised at that, either. Big Head was everything that Thadon, Syl, and Sheogorath were not. He was everything that Etta was not, too. She was ashamed, for she felt she was deceiving him. How could she possibly deserve Big Head's love?

Her last stop was at the palace. She walked up to Sheogorath's throne and said nothing, but tossed the Charity of Madness at his feet. She dropped the Wabbajack, for good measure. Then she turned on her heel and left the palace. By daybreak she was in Cyrodiil.

She had entered the Isles hopeless, near madness, not caring if she lived or died. She left the Isles sane, deeply sorrowful and deeply ashamed for all that had gone before.

She found Shadowmere at the Bravil stable. There was one hope left, and it was a dim one.

It was a long ride to Anvil.

I was like...what is glargg talking about? Oh yea, I Shivering Isles! After all this time I've still never done Si. I need to get that next.

Lady Saga is now leaving Varondo. The adventure was successful since she found a couple valuable varla stones she can sell or use. She's currently just collecting these. Saga's magical mace (Rockshatter) lost all its juice. Just as Saga was thinking she could use one of those varlas to recharge her mace, the damn thing breakes! And she's nowhere near skilled enough to repair it; she'll have to find the nearest town.

She can use her crystal ball to see where she is on Cyrodiil's map, but this takes an hour to do. She's currently torn between firing Erthor (going to Skingrad) or keeping him around (back towards Anvil where her current homes, Lord Drad's slave houses, are).

I really like you're writing Glargg its quite exceptional.

Well done, glargg. Etta realizing her mistake of helping the Daedra Lord Sheogorath reminds me of the most shameful incident of Buffy’s life. Here's a snip from Episode 40 of her Journal:

* * *

I shook Borderwatch's shaman by the shoulders. The robed Khajiit remained listless as I looked up at his eyes. "Listen, this was not the K'Sharra," I said. "It was a stupid wood elf that stole S'trassa's olroy cheese to summon those rats. I then used your own poison to kill the town's sheep. Ri'Bassa, do you hear what I'm saying? It was me, not prophecy."

There was no acknowledgement in the Khajiit's blank gaze. His words floated flatly into the air above my head, "The end of all things has come." He then turned from me.

I scampered in front of him to block his path. "I know not how to replace the olroy cheese, but if I ever find some, I promise to deliver it here. Look," I pointed toward the six sheep grazing inside the town's enclosure, "I bought sheep from Marie Alouette, the herder at Water's Edge. She and Biene Amelion helped me herd them up here. We cleaned the poison residue from their trough. And see?" I swept my arm around the town, "We carried the poor dogs and dead sheep away from town and burned what remained of them." My eyes pleaded with him.

"The K'Sharra has come true. It's hopeless. Leave while you can." He turned and walked away.

Biene grabbed my arm to stop me from following the shaman.

I watched R'Bassa as he wandered aimlessly about the town like a lost kitten with a broken spirit.

The Breton's grip on my arm eased from one of restraint to one of comfort, but there was no softening the truth in her words, "We've done what we can, Buffy. I hope you will learn from this."

"I will, Biene," I said, blinking back tears. "The head of my guild branch in Bravil told me that wisdom comes from experience - and experience comes from bad judgment. Never again will I allow myself to be blindly seduced by the whims of a Daedra Lord."

* * *

Very cool, Acadian. The frustration of that situation, the mark it must have left on Buffy, is palpable.

In a strange way, I think Etta can thank Sheogorath, though. She started out in a bad place, and went from worse to worse to worse. She hit bottom before she entered the Shivering Isles, and was really just a walking time bomb.

Etta was taken as a child and sold into slavery and prostitution. She lived a life of abuse and mistreatment until she was eventually traded to a pirate to settle a debt, and she killed the entire crew and escaped when the ship was in Anvil.

She became involved with the Dark Brotherhood, and followed a twisted path of Murder and Treachery all the way to the position of Listener. In the process, she was directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of practically everyone who meant anything to her. By the time she reached the Shivering Isles, she was seething with anger, nearly suicidal, a raging menace for anyone who crossed her path.

[Personal note: This is the most difficult character I have ever dealt with, and there have been times lately when I've been very reluctant to launch Oblivion. So much so, that I have been playing Deus Ex for the last week or so, procrastinating. I am so relieved to have gotten to the "redemption" part of the story! ]

Congrats for Etta! She has emerged from the trials of her personal Underworld, wounded but wiser, and is now poised to reclaim her life.

Btw, have you noticed how closely Etta's story parallels Joseph Campbell's Hero Cycle?

I see what you mean. The character definitely came to mind as an exercise in loss and redemption. I had never done the DB quest line, and never liked the kind of cartoony villains who would do that kind of thing. "Sithis" never made sense to me as a character motivation. I was thinking about what kind of real-world backstory would lead a real-world person down such a destructive path. It had to be a really "broken" person, but I still had to like her, in order to play out the story. She had to start as a victim.

So here's Etta, who is suddenly "free" after a life of captivity and abuse, but she doesn't know anything except captivity and abuse, so she brings it right along with her; she isn't free at all. She latches right onto the first powerful figure who enters her life, and lets herself be managed and used in a way that's worse than where she started.

Same pattern with Sheogorath, except that in the Shivering Isles, she can't ignore the madness all around her. She has to face it, and starts to understand it. She starts noticing suffering, not in the shallow sense of sorrow and pain, but in the deeper sense of what we create in ourselves. She meets Sickly Bernice, and sees that that woman creates her own sickness, and that no elixir could ever cure her, and then she understands that she herself is carrying a similar sickness.

And then she meets loving, loony Big Head. He's as mad as everyone else, but he's a happy, singing island in the churning sea. Big Head doesn't suffer; he sings. Big Head changes everything.

I'm torn now between what I wanna do and what my character wants lol. I wanna do the DB but Cheza doesn't, actually I'm not sure what she wants to do. My writer's block isn't helping the situation either! Maybe I should of planned this out better in the start

Do what she wants to do, it's actually more rewarding because you really can end up in quite surprising situations. It's better to let the story guide you. Helps with writer's block too, trust me on that...

Well, the girls have arrived in Bravil to complete some outstanding business with S'krivva - (who promptly handed out another little job, and promoted Niamh to Cat Burglar) - and also to pick up a book for the Archaeologists' Guild. N & V need some time to sit down and go through their kit as well, since both of them are positively groaning under the weight of accumulated clutter.
After that they plan on heading south to the Silver Sky temple but from there the situation is as yet unclear. Vilja wants to head north to explore Cyrodiil up past Bruma - (secretly Niamh thinks she's just homesick, but Vilja won't really talk about it. In truth Niamh is a little scared to ask her anyway in case Vilja decides to leave...) - whilst Niamh has a hankering to head through the portal to the Shivering Isles, Vilja has never been there before and Niamh would like to show her some of the sights and besides, there's unfinished business there.

Vilja's injuries have healed nicely aside from her eyes of course, although she is becoming more used to them - (just as well really). There is some nasty scarring around her right eye that doesn't seem to want to clear and her eyebrow hasn't really grown back but other than that she's a lucky girl...

When your narrator summoned the gate and stepped back to this side it was raining in Bravil and miserable out. S'krivva's house was inviting and the two of them were showing a marked reluctance to leave it. Your narrator wonders if they'll still be there when next he steps through to their world...